So why does God save? For many reasons, but in and through all of them, God displays who he is and thus glorifies himself. God manifests his glory because in saving us he displays his wisdom (Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 1:18-31; Eph. 3:10-11), righteousness, justice (Rom. 3:25-26), love, mercy, kindness, (Eph. 2:4-7; Rom. 9:20-23), freedom, wrath, and power (Rom. 9:20-23).

Has the glory of God become a cliché among the young, restless, Reformed crowd? The vocabulary of glory is on the rise, but certain misunderstandings and imbalances linger. Will “the glory of God” become a cliché, much like “the love of God” to the previous generation, which too often reduced love to sentimentality?

It is encouraging to hear much about God’s glory as his ultimate end. I rejoice in the renewed interested in Jonathan Edwards as well as the contemporary influence of pastors like John Piper and ministries like The Gospel Coalition. I rejoice that many are captured by God’s glory as the ultimate end, as it is the goal of creation; the exodus; Israel; Jesus’ ministry, life, death, resurrection, and reign; our salvation; the church; the consummation; all of salvation history; and even God himself. Paul often highlights this cosmic goal: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29); “all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16; cf. Rom. 11:33-36; Heb. 2:10).

While there is a healthy resurgence in teaching that glory is God’s ultimate end, many inadvertently equate God’s ultimate end with God’s comprehensive motivation (Edwards and Piper do not make this mistake, but many who read them do). As a result, we rarely hear that God often acts with multiple ends in mind.
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